If you followed our blog much this summer, you may remember that we ran a series of king salmon spey rod reviews based on our experience fishing during the early season at BC West. If you missed that series, here’s the wrap up post.

We tend to follow spey tech pretty closely, but in the course of getting ready for that trip we made a discovery – Airflo recently started making their classic Skagit Compact heads in three larger sizes. If you’ve got a rod that you want to fish in the Skagit style, but haven’t found a head that loads it up well, this post is for you.

In the past the Skagit Compact topped out at 720 grains, but today you can get yourself a Skagit Compact in a very meaty 750 grains, a super stout 780 grains, and an RPG-like 810 grains. That’ll load ’em up.

They’re a little hard to find. We’d recommend that you give a call to your local Airflo dealer and ask them to order one (or three) for you. If that’s not an option you can also find them on Amazon – here are links for the 750, 780 and 810.

Introduction

It’s hard to make spey rods designed to catch big fish! Setting aside more ‘secondary’ factors like taper and grips, the two fundamental variables in rod design are length and weight. For anglers chasing king salmon where they’re bright and strong – places like the Kanektok and the Dean – each of these variables presents a bit of a quandry.

Length

Longer rods in the 14 foot + range make it easier to make longer casts with heavy tips – and far away and deep describes the water where king salmon spend a lot of their time. On the other hand, shorter rods are much better for fighting big fish. A 15 foot rod will deliver your king rig to the water where kings are likely to live, but fighting a bright 25 pound fish on a 15 foot rod is no fun for anyone.

Weight

Lighter spey rods are generally more fun to cast, and they tire you out less. Heavier spey rods cast heavier lines and flies better, and are definitely much better for fighting big fish. An 8 weight spey rod may cast beautifully all day long, but it’s definitely not the best stick to put the wood to a big king.

Scott has just released their spey rod purpose-built for king salmon – the T2H 12510/4. If you know Scott’s nomenclature, you know that means it’s a 12 1/2 foot rod for a 10 weight line. In the ‘spey fishing for king salmon’ world, this rod is definitely on one extreme – its mission is to allow you to deliver heavy junk to a king salmon, sure, but primarily to be able to fight a strong fish, really hard, once hooked up.

We fished some preproduction models of this rod during king season at Alaska West this past summer, and we’ve cast the production model as well – this review is based on a mix of those experiences.

How It Casts

The butt section on this rod is extremely stout and powerful. It takes a whole boatload of grain weight to get it to load deeply (more on this below). During one test session your reviewer made a few casts working out to an easy, comfortable distance and noticed it was taking a while to strip back in between casts; counting strips on the next cast came up with 15. Even though this is a short rod in the spey world, distance is not a problem – the butt section more than makes up for the shorter length.

Like other short spey rods, it’s not particularly forgiving. Good casts sail, but good timing is important.

Scott calls it ‘Medium Fast’ and we agree. Your first impression with this rod is much more likely to be “Really Powerful” than “Buttery”. It’s a Howitzer.

It's for catching these. Photo: Cameron Miller

Which Line

We did all of our testing with the Airflo Skagit Compact 720. It took that line plus 15 feet of T-17 to get us thinking “OK, maybe this is too much”. The 720 plus 13 feet of T-14 was darned-near perfect – which is nice, given that 13 feet of T-14 is probably the tip we fish the most for kings at Alaska West.

How It Fights Big Fish

Better than any spey rod we’ve fished. Seriously, it’s a short, fast 10 weight spey rod. You can pull really hard with this thing. Turning the head of a big chrome salmon is never easy, but this rod makes you as the angler much less under-gunned than any other rod we’ve fought kings with.

Two More Things

The cork grips on the 12510/4 are longer than normal. The helps even more with this rod’s primary mission – pulling hard on big fish. That being said, some of us didn’t love them when casting. If you’ve spent a little time casting other short spey rods, these longer grips can take some getting used to – especially on off-shoulder casts that require your bottom hand to cross in front of your belly.

We love the alignment dots. Why don’t all fly rods have them?

All the better to punish you with, my dear.

Conclusion

The Scott T2H 12510/4 is an incredibly powerful spey rod that more than lives up to its mission as a dedicated king salmon stick. Fish it with a head somewhere north of 700 grains, and put the wood to ’em!

Tom Larimer is more than a good buddy of ours – he’s one of the top handful of guides in the Northwest, and he also hosts a couple of trips each year to Alaska West and BC West.

Tom also happens to have worked directly with Tim Rajeff at Airflo on the design of their Skagit Compact Shooting Head. This head is really popular today for good reason – it was the first ‘modern’ Skagit head, incorporating real tapers to provide better casting performance.

We asked Tom to give us a little background on the design of the Airflo Skagit Compact, and he was happy to oblidge.

Thanks Tom!

Tom Larimer on the Airflo Skagit Compact

Being a steelhead guide, I test my gear to its limits on a daily basis. I’ve come to realize there are many spey lines that perform great on a casting pond but fail miserably in real life fishing situations. The proving ground for me is the rivers I guide in Oregon and the waters of Larimer Outfitters’ hosted trips, the Kanektok and the Dean.

On all of these rivers, we deal with tight casting conditions, relentless wind, tough wading, extreme temperatures, and long days. We’re often fishing big flies and heavy sink-tips, especially when chasing monster kings on the Kanektok and Dean. If a fly line can perform on these rivers, it can get the job done anywhere.

When I helped Tim Rajeff design the Skagit Compact shooting head, we had one goal in mind… to build a fly line the average angler could cast in real fishing situations. We wanted to build a fishing tool – not a line that throws pretty tight loops with a piece of yarn. More so, we wanted to help anglers catch more steelhead and salmon. After numerous prototypes and a bunch of cut up fly lines, we came up with what is now the most popular Skagit head on the market.

Taper and Overhang

The reason this fly line has become so favored by anadromous anglers is multifaceted. First, the taper of the line is built to efficiently load the rod from the moment the caster begins to form their D-loop. The old saying, “let the rod do the work” is all fine and dandy. Problem is; if you don’t feel the rod loading it’s hard to let it do the work.

The back taper gives any spey rod that smooth groovy feeling we all love to feel. The rear taper also allows the caster to utilize overhang. Overhang is the amount of running line left between the rod tip and the end of the Skagit head before making a Spey cast. If you’re in a tight casting situation, you can strip the Skagit head right up to the end of the rod tip. This allows you to make a small D-loop behind you and still have the power to get the cast to turn over. Conversely, when you have the room to move, you can use three or four feet of over-hang. Now you can use more line speed, create a mega-huge D-loop, and unleash some monster casts.

The front taper is the “business end” of the line. Once the cast is outbound, the massive front wedge kicks everything into over-drive. Bottom line, it chucks big sink-tips and heavy flies with minimum effort from the caster.

Materials

Taper isn’t the only reason for this line’s success. Airflo fly lines are built with polyurethane. Most fly line coatings are built using PVC. The problem with PVC is it lacks durability. Ever notice how most fly lines feel really great right out of the box, but after a few days on the water they quickly loose that magical feeling? After a while they will dry out and eventually crack.

On the other hand, polyurethane has way more longevity. It feels good from day one to the day a big Dean River steelie decides to festoon it through the trees on the far bank and you lose it – that actually happened to me! The stuff is indestructible. Plus, a supple line allows you to throw laser tight loops. Most fly line companies don’t use polyurethane because it’s a pain in the ass to work with. That being said, Airflo has mastered it and it shows in all of their products.

If you’ve never tried the Airflo Skagit Compact, I think you’ll be surprised by how easy it casts. Personally, I know it’s improved my two-handed casting. Plus, I can honestly say it’s helped my clients catch more fish with less effort. Give the green line a try this season – I know you won’t be disappointed.

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Deneki Outdoors operates fishing lodges in Alaska, The Bahamas, British Columbia, and Chile.

Our blog gives anglers a daily dose of life on the water. We combine fishing reports, tips, gear reviews, information about our operations and special guest posts with pictures and stories, all related to our fisheries and beyond.